


Arkham Dreaming: Prologue

by capuaisburning



Series: Arkham Dreaming [1]
Category: Arkham Asylum (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Arkham Asylum, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-05
Updated: 2014-08-05
Packaged: 2018-02-11 21:31:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2083884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capuaisburning/pseuds/capuaisburning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A new doctor is introduced to Arkham Asylum's maximum-security wing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Arkham Dreaming: Prologue

It was a typical night in Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane. A hundred voices, hoarse with madness and primal hate, were raised in a frenzied chorus that made the staff grimace with anxiety as they walked their rounds, while the mundane patients cowered in the corners of their cells. The denizens of the maximum-security Special Patients Wing were acting up again.

Special Patients was guarded by hulking gates of iron, as well as thick-necked men with cold, sullen eyes. These conventional defences were married to sensor systems designed for an almost paranoid degree of sophisticated scrutiny. They had been painstakingly installed in order to keep the worst fiends in America safely inside their cages, like mystic wards jailing a pack of Biblical demons. Yet though it could keep them contained, the system could not or would not keep them silent. They bellowed, they hooted, they laughed with the shrill, orgiastic abandon of those for whom the norms of social restraint had long since lost all meaning. And beneath the thunderous hollering of mockery and abuse, taut with rage, contempt and warped glee, there was a menacing susurration of deadly whispers, an unrelenting tide of threats, blasphemies and temptations that left every orderly worn-out and drawn-faced by the time the sun returned to the sky.

“It’s a tactic,” Dr. McIntyre explained to me as we clopped down an endless hallway of washed-out grey, the faint stench of fear and effluent biting at my nostrils.

“Though the segregated patients are isolated by their distinctive pathologies, they are occasionally capable of a remarkably high degree of co-operation,” she explained. “Hatred of the staff, and indeed of all authority, as well as the obvious shared desire for freedom are very powerful uniting commonalities. They go through this nightly performance several times a week, in order to fray nerves and distract attention. If the staff are tired, anxious and on edge, this will create vulnerabilities and blind-spots that can be used to facilitate smuggling, deal-making, even break-out attempts.”

“Which have been frequent in the past, yes?” I asked, concentrating on keeping my voice steady.

Dr McIntyre treated me to a tight-lipped, joyless smile. “Not as frequently as popular mythology would have you believe, I assure you. And certainly not as frequently since we transferred the most violent and…unusual cases to the new, upgraded secure wing. You must appreciate that many past escapes have occurred in unusual circumstances. Patients would abscond while on day-release, particularly early in their criminal “careers” when the threat they posed was not fully appreciated. Ambushes during court hearings and routine transfers were also a favoured method. And of course, the most serious incident several years ago was engineered by a group of heavily-armed professional mercenaries, against which a hospital facility could hardly be expected to prepare an adequate defence.”

“And now?” I said, with brittle nonchalance.

That smile again. “Now, despite appearances, Arkham Asylum is as safe as it has ever been,” she said, “as you will shortly discover once I’ve given you a proper tour of the cells.”

I peered warily through the reinforced glass. Jervis Tetch seemed oblivious to my scrutiny, and to the stormy echoes of his fellow inmate’s performance. He squatted at the rear of his cell, half-turned away from us, turning a tatty pack of playing cards over and over in his chapped and calloused hands. His buck teeth champed noiselessly at the air. Muscles twitched almost rhythmically in his pallid cheeks. A strange-looking man, to be sure, with eyes that were so unsettlingly bright and wild that I was secretly glad they weren’t fixed on me. Yet it was still difficult to reconcile the dumpy figure in the unflattering overalls with the fiend that tabloid headlines screamed of as one of the true terrors of Gotham City.

I glanced at Dr. McIntyre, who was smiling knowingly at me. “Not quite the fairy-tale monster you’d been expecting?”

I smiled helplessly back, feeling the mounting tension of the past several days begin to fractionally ease. “It was difficult not to have pre-conceptions,” I admitted, “considering how high-profile so many of your…our patients are. Not to mention their…lurid reputations.”

“Perfectly understandable, doctor. You’ll find that a decent-sized chunk of your orientation here will consist simply of unlearning the media narrative, the larger-than-life characters of popular legend, so you can approach your patients with a fresh and uncluttered perspective.”

I nodded. “Yes, I can appreciate the need for some sort of…re-education, I suppose.”

Her brow furrowed. “They’re just people, Dr. Goldman. Not goblins, not dark geniuses. They’re damaged, dysfunctional human beings, bearing the scars of what can be years of mental, emotional, and even…physical trauma. Those of them struggling with meta-human alterations are the most painfully human of all. Could you imagine what it’s like to _be_ Basil Karlo or Victor Fries, a wounded, desperate consciousness trapped in a body that your fellow citizens regard like some horror-movie monster?”

She gave Tetch a last, almost tender look, and continued along the corridor at a business-like clip. Flustered, I fell into step behind her.

“We follow a strict ethos here,” she continued, “despite what Jack Ryder’s comment pieces would have you believe. They’re not shut away on bread and water. This is not a place of punishment, either formal or implicit. There is to be no judgement, no outbursts of moral indignation in therapy sessions, no matter what your patients might tell you in the throes of misguided enthusiasm. If you start badgering them into taking responsibility for their actions before they are psychologically-prepared for it, you will be dismissed. Do you understand?”

“Absolutely, Dr. McIntyre,” I said.

She looked at me sternly, and nodded again. “I think you’ll do fine. Let’s complete the tour.”

So many infamous faces, in dizzying succession. Poison Ivy, smirking lasciviously out of a cell so crammed with lovingly-tended plants that it resembled a greenhouse. Jonathon Crane (must stop thinking of him as Scarecrow, I told myself), not so frightening when stripped of his costume and his infamous toxins, blinking irritably behind absurd wire-framed spectacles. Maxie Zeus, babbling good-naturedly in his straightjacket. Two-Fa… _Harvey Dent_ , his disfigured side turned shyly away from us.

I felt myself relax further and further as the tour went on. I noted a curious effect. Wherever a patient was acting up, a few soft yet stern words or a searching look from my companion usually proved enough to quiet them, slowly reducing the harsh cacophony to something relatively tolerable. I let out my breath in a long sigh.

Doctor McIntyre’s point crystallized in my mind. They _were_ just people. Some of these sad souls looked more like threats to themselves than anyone else. I felt the tension drip out of my taut limbs, and after a while I was striding along with what felt like a measure of my more experienced colleague's confidence and authority.

We rounded a corner, and walked briskly past another batch of identical cells. HE was in the third of them.

He was shuffling the pages of a newspaper and tutting at the contents. If not for his smudged inmate’s uniform, and, you know, everything else, he could have been a well-to-do businessman catching up on the state of the stock market during his morning commute. I cannot overstate how bizarre the effect of seeing that ghoulish face creased into a quizzical frown of concentration was.

“Good evening, Jack,” Doctor McIntyre said brightly.

HE looked up at us, eyes shining with what seemed like welcome. I flinched instinctively, and absurdly found myself shuffling a half-step towards Doctor McIntyre, like a child seeking to hide behind his mother’s skirts. I stopped, flushing, when I registered their amused glances.

“Good evening, Doc,” he said with a wry smirk. “Found some new meat for the grinder, have we?”

“Now, Jack,” McIntyre chided, “what have I told you about teasing new staff? Don’t pretend you forgot our chat about respect the other day?”

He affected a theatrical shrug, a puckish smile dancing across his lean face, a merry glitter in those stark eyes.

“You know I can’t help myself, Doc. I’m what you might call “irresistibly compelled”!” He chuckled. It wasn’t the demented, theatrical mirth I was familiar with from years of those lurid pirate broadcasts. Rather, it was the knowing, self-aware humour of a man who knows he is in bad shape and is trying to make the best of it.

Doctor McIntyre gave him a firm look. “That’s exactly what you’re here to work on, Jack. Let’s not squander the past fortnight’s progress on some of those old habits. Doctor Goldman comes highly recommended. I’m sure at some point you’ll have some very helpful and stimulating discussions.”

He inclined his head and treated me to a courtly bow. “Pray forgive my outrageous cheekiness, good doctor. I am possessed of tragically antisocial impulses, which, with the aid of this august institution and doubtless your wise and learned guidance, I intend to one day purge utterly from my psyche.”

I nodded hesitantly back. He flashed a gap-toothed grin, winked at Doctor McIntyre, and returned his attention to his newspaper.

We walked on, a little unsteadily in my case. Once we were out of earshot, McIntyre turned to me.

“Sorry to spring that on you,” she said, injecting a softer note into her voice, “but I felt that it was a necessary point to make.”

I swallowed through a dry throat. “It did take me back. How you spoke to him, I mean,” I rasped. “It wasn’t how I expected…I mean it’s hard to get your head around being, being like that around him. I thought there’d be a bit more, I don’t know if it’s the right word, but ceremony, perhaps?”

“You think I was tempting fate, being so forward with him. I wasn’t out to goad him, believe me. It’s important, Doctor Goldman, crucially important, that you don’t let any of the patients here visibly intimidate you, no matter how notorious their reputations. If you cower in their presence, then you can’t do your job. It all ties back to remembering that they are ultimately just people, people who are under your care, and your authority as well.”

“Of course,” I said, a shade too hastily. “Doesn’t it aggravate types like, like him though? You’d think that…well, might someone of his pathology carry a grudge?”

“Believe me, if he somehow got out of his cell, which he won’t, it wouldn’t make much difference in the end whether you enabled him or not. The Joker prides himself on his unpredictable, obstructive ways. Being firm, even condescending, is simply necessary if you don’t want him to undermine you at every turn. Don’t believe the legend, Doctor. He’s not some supernatural demon, but a deviant personality in _urgent_ need of discipline and correction.”

A shadow passed over McIntyre’s face. “You have to assert your dominance,” she muttered, “it’s the only thing some of them understand.”

I blinked bemusedly. Noting my discomfort, she was immediately back to being polished and business-like. “Well, we’d better get back to the staff facilities for the final particulars. I imagine you’re eager to get started with your treatment.”

That’s an odd way of putting it, I thought, as we clopped away.

Outside, in the sprawling grounds beyond Arkham’s walls, the foliage rippled in the racing wind. The screeches and howls of the inmates were faint and muffled, dancing puckishly on the gale, chasing each other upwards towards the scratched silver dollar of the Moon.  


End file.
